Posted
Jun 24, 2018
Is Browser Caching Hiding Your Latest Site Revision?
At a recent lecture to developers, digital strategist David Whitaker discussed how visitors to a website or blog might not be seeing the latest version due to browser caching. Simple HTML coding will ensure your visitors always see the newest version on your web pages.
"A web browser loads pages faster when the browser retrieves a web page or graphics from the stored cache files instead of downloading the files. Everyone enjoys faster loading web pages, and most people don't consider the size of the cache folders until it becomes a storage problem. Infrequent surfers may not clear their cache folders for long periods of time," said David Whitaker.
Websites that depend on repeat visitors should view browser cache as problematic. If you don't add do-not-cache coding to your HTML, the average visitor does not see your websites updated content. E-commerce websites and monetized blogs depend on repeat customers to stay in business. Repeat visitors should always be viewing the latest version of your site without effort. The only people who regularly use the manual refresh feature are webmasters working on their sites live and people bidding on auctions.
Savvy surfers may clear their browser cache frequently and limit how much cache is stored. The average surfer may never realize that they even have a cache folder and that they are viewing a cached page. Instead of hitting the refresh button, they may surf to another site looking for fresh content. E-commerce sites may lose a sale, while blogs may appear to have not been updated recently.
Websites that accept sensitive information from visitors may already have code in place to prevent caching. Pages with forms that require a credit card and similar information should never be cached. If you use a ready-made e-commerce website and have not done the coding yourself, you may not even realize that specific pages have HTML coding in the head so that they will not cache. This coding can be applied to any static page of a website or blog that you do not want your visitors' browser to cache.
To prevent caching insert the following codes in the head of each page that you do not want to be cached. The first code is . The second code is . This code tells the browser that the web page has already expired. The head of your webpage should look this:
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You can also put both tags at the very end of the HTML just before the closing body tag. This will ensure that 99% of your visitors' web browsers will not cache any page the tags are placed.
If you disable caching wisely, you can ensure that visitors to your website or blog see the latest version of your pages. This should keep them coming back for fresh content often.
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